Solid gay, all the way through

"Sean Penn’s smile lines in Milk are a wonder. They’re not crinkles, they’re furrows; they seem to stretch all the way down to his soul. As the gay activist Harvey Milk, who was shot to death in 1978 along with the San Francisco mayor, George Moscone, the volatile Penn is unprecedentedly giddy. There’s anger in his Milk, but it never festers—it’s instantly channeled into political action... he shakes off Method self-attention the way Milk shook off the shame of being gay. As the personal becomes political, he opens all the windows and gets visibly high on the breeze." — David Edelstein, New York magazine

It's the happiest I've seen him. And certainly the best reason to see the movie: come see Sean Penn happy! There were moments in Sweet and Lowdown when he seemed blissfully transported by his guitar playing, but this is different. It's not solitary, its the infectious sort of happiness that calms everyone around him, leaving his political opponents with only sour the taste of their own unhappiness, and no option but to get unhappier still. I loved Philadelphia, too, and never quite got the charge of Uncle Tommery levelled at it. Watching Milk, I understood it a little better. There's no Denzel Washington character to hold the audience's hand: this movie is solid gay, all the way through. There's barely a straight character in the whole thing, except for a superbly played Dan White (Josh Brolin) who is drawn to Milk in ominously tighter circles, with an itch he can't quite scratch.

I'm not sure what this does to my Oscar Predictions. It's always easier not to have a horse in the race. I had Di Caprio and Winslett for Revolutionary Road, Benjamin Button for best film, director, and adapted screenplay, Milk for original screenplay, Australia for costumes and cinematography, Heath Ledger for supporting in Batman and Amy Adams for Doubt. I have a feeling Revolutionary Road is going to be a worthy bore (loved the book, hated American Beauty) but the reunion of Di Caprio and Winslettt, both overdue, both now sucking up in the right way, is going to be hard for Academy voters to resist.

Colouring in Coppola

The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette as seen through their colour schemes. I'm puzzled: is there really no blue sky in Marie Antoinette? And no flesh tones in The Virgin Suicides?

Instant messaging

A gallery of messages from Americans to their new president elect.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

"Barack Obama has a tough dilemma. If he staffs his administration with talented outsiders, he satisifies citizen demand for “change,” but the problem is that outsiders don’t have a clue about how to govern in Washington. Yet if Obama staffs his administration with insiders who do know how to govern (clearly, his chosen option), he undercuts his “change” mantra – mostly because so many of those insiders logged time with the Clintons, and, on occasion, became soiled by the association." — Dick Polman, American Debate

I've heard a lot of this over the last week, as Obama unveils his new cabinet appointments. Clinton? How is that change? Daschle? Old hat! Richardson? I've heard of him, too! It's hard to know what would satisfy the 'change' brigade. A cabinet of total strangers? Plumbers? Cable technicians? Greeks? I'm sure that when Obama used the word 'change' when speaking to millions of Americans over the course of the campaign, the thing that popped into their heads was not 'I do hope change means a cabinet position for someone untouched by Washington experience.' I'm pretty certain they were thinking of their mortgages, or gas prices, or the war in Iraq. Just a guess.

Michael Moore not Roger Moore

"This Bond film is explicit that the United States under Bush has become the bad guy, that US intelligence is in league with rogue mercenaries and brutal, rapist-generals who plot coups against elected governments. Bond therefore has to take on the United States government (at one point, a SWAT team from the CIA Special Activities Division tries to capture Bond in a bar in La Paz, but fails because Leiter tips Bond off to their approach. The good American in this film is the one willing to betray the US government to a more virtuous MI6 field officer). Craig's Bond is an intimation of the sort of Britain that could have been, if Tony Blair had stood up to Bush and refused to be dragged into an illegal war of choice, and into other actions and policies that profoundly contradicted the principles on which the Labour Party had been founded (and you could imagine Craig's Bond voting for Old Labour, while Flemings's was obviously a Tory). In a way, this Bond stands in for Clare Short, who resigned as a cabinet minister from Blair's government in 2003 over the illegitimacy of the Iraq War." — Juan Col, Informed Comment

I had a good time. It's a little confusing (whatever happened to the Bond villains patiently explaining their master plan for the benefit of us ignoramuses?) but the action sequences are genuienly classy as opposed to fake-rolex classy, and the women are great — particularly Fields, the prim English red head who sends men flying to their doom with a cry of "gosh, I'm sorry". There's a great detail, about 50 minutes in, when Bond takes off his shirt as we see a bunch of scars on his body: not nicks and smears from the last fight, or even the last fight but one, but slowly healing welts from some fight three weeks ago. Maybe the car chase at the beginning of the movie? Or the torture scene at the end of Casino Royale? How long does he have between missions anyway?

Foreign Policy meanwhile lists Five Real Missions for 007: infilitrate Pakistan in search of the H-bomb; check up on China's naval capabilities; investigate Russia's new energy wealth; bribe the Taliban; and establish Kim Jong Il's successor.

Quote of the day

"Sitting here in these chairs that I'm going to be proposing but in working with these governors who again on the front lines are forced to and it's our privileged obligation to find solutions to the challenges facing our own states every day being held accountable, not being just one of many just casting votes or voting present every once in a while, we don't get away with that." — Sarah Palin

It's rare that one comes across a Palin sentence that doesn't contain at least some clue as to what her intention was before she opened her mouth. In other words, they have intent, if not content. This one has neither. It's one of the purest instance of verbal freefall — wind-in-your-hair, 200mph ground-rushing-up-at-ya mush — I have come across in years. A person who comes up with a sentence like that is almost incapable of knowing whether they are lying, which is one of the great things about these interviews she persists in giving: in her own head she really does think she's setting the record straight. I can see why John Cleese is such a fan.

How it is for New Yorkers

Kurt Anderson compares the mood in the city to that following 9/11:—

"In Union Square, a friend realized that the last time he was part of such a spontaneous emotional gathering there was on 9/11. And I choked up just hearing about the very young crowds in Union Square and elsewhere breaking into “The Star-Spangled Banner... Starting now, New York City is part of America again, the happy-happy-joy-joy obverse of the way it was after 9/11, when we and the rest of the country embraced in our shared American shock and grief. This time we are not victims, but winners. Victimhood, at least, was a familiar part of New Yorkers’ repertoire. Now we have no choice but to be both cheerfully pro-American and earnestly optimistic, which are not exactly our default positions. Around 2003, most of us became highly invested in loathing a national regime that we know is wired to loathe people like us. A symbiosis was established. We’ve been shouting and pounding on a locked door with mounting fury for three, four, five, six years—and now that it’s suddenly swung wide open, all of us outsiders welcomed right inside, we’re sweaty and breathless and a little unsure exactly what to do next without someone to demonize and blame. New Yorkers enjoyed being prophets without honor in their own land. Righteous political umbrage felt good. An Obama-loving friend admits that now he actually feels slightly let down without his beleagueredness and anti-Republican rage to energize him. A majority of Americans … agrees with us?" — New York Magazine

The whole piece is worth a read.